The peopling of Australia : United Kingdom immigration

Description

The years that span the Federation of the Australian colonies in
1901, and the onslaught of the Great Depression, witnessed a conscious
drive to populate and develop Australia more rapidly. The country
looked upon as the source of additional population was the United
Kingdom.
The thesis examines the supply and demand behavioural responses
behind UK migration to Australia together with the formation of
migration and development policy of Australian governments,Settling
UK migrants upon...[Show more] the land was not, as is commonly supposed, a sine qua
non of Australia’s migration policy, nor was development policy
restricted to the expansion and diversification of rural activity.
Rather, Australian governments intervened across a broader front in
support of output, employment and high standards of living, and directly,
and indirectly, in support of population growth. The latter, in turn,
conveyed an ever growing army of consumers, producers and taxpayers into
the future. It also meant greater national security.
The structural equations estimated in the second part of the thesis
cast further light on the demand for UK immigrants and also on why
people came. The model differs from earlier Australian and overseas
studies in that population is distinguished from labour, supply and
demand are specified as 'excess' curves, and the traditional emphasis
on 'free market' labour transfers is largely replaced by an emphasis
on government intervention.
It is difficult to directly compare the empirical results with past
research based on different models. This is particularly so in the case
of Australian studies which have been wholly confined to single equation
push-pull models, whereas one of the advances made in this study is the
estimation of separate supply and demand functions. One general
observation can be made. The only factors detected in previous studies
relating to Australia have been unemployment rates. In contrast, the
current study has uncovered a wide range of determinants of migration.
My estimation of the inverse demand function (government subsidies
to migrants being taken as the left hand side variable), suggests that
variation in demand was predominantly determined by the short term
absorptive capacity of the Australian economy; the significant explanators were public investment, wealth-cum-budget capabilities, and the degree
of tightness in the labour market. On the supply side, the preponderant
influences behind migration were the expected income gains accruing to
human capital, and the costs of migrating - the latter entailing the
costs of transport and job search. Governments most directly influenced
transport costs via contract rates and passage subsidies. Though less
directly, their intervention in support of jobs and wages, most likely
also operated to increase supply.
Within the context of the broad targets of population additions set,
Australia, it is argued, obtained the numbers she sought. But there were
many inherent weaknesses and implicit costs in the strategy of peopling
Australia and already by the eve of the depression,the presumed efficacy
of policy was under attack.